Back up confusion

[bobrobert]

I am a little confused by the back up options with respect to a drive. I wish to back up programs and not image folders ( they are backed up on another drive ). Can I choose a program which only backs up my programs? This will mean a small back of program files ( about 4 GB's ) and not a whole drive. Do I need to back up 64 bit and 32 bit program files? If I do so and restore after a Windows crash can I be sure that my installed programs will function OK? If so what free ( preferably but will consider paying ) program does this without worrying that it will fail. I did a search of the forum but wasn't sure about the backup of only the program thing. I believe some programs only back up a whole drive which obviously I don't want. TIA

[Banyarola]

I use Acronis True Image which allows you to back up seperate folders etc...
But, I use it to make an entire image. This way if anything goes wrong I can then restore the entire image and be back up and running in no time.

[Tarbo]

Think of programs and the operating system as one package. When programs get installed (the exception is portable apps which don't get installed) they are integrated for better or worse with the registry of the operating system so you have to image the programs and the operating system together if you want them to work correctly if you ever need to restore them.
So in general, one needs to image the system partition as a whole. You can seperate data into another partition fairly easily but Windows 7 is still quite a hefty OS as far as disk space goes, but systems are much faster these days, which compensates, so its still a pretty quick process relatively speaking.
TI does have many advantages and is worth paying for, usually one can get a significant discount from suggested price.

[bobrobert]

Thanks for your feedback. I now see that I need to make an image copy of the whole partition on my computer. Unfortunately because of lack of space on my other hard drive I will have to delete my image files ( which were backed up on another computer and copied to the new one ) and then do an image copy.

[handcuff36]

Hello and good morning.

Thanks for your feedback. I now see that I need to make an image copy of the whole partition on my computer. Unfortunately because of lack of space on my other hard drive I will have to delete my image files ( which were backed up on another computer and copied to the new one ) and then do an image copy.

This is normal if you do an image, in Acronis, it is called a "clone". The intend of a clone is to replace the HD in your system with, normally, a larger one. It can also be used as a life-guard, I do. I clone my machine monthly at least and if it dies on me, as I experiment a lot on it, I can just clone back the "image", I loose the data from the last clone to today.

I use the one and only dedicated USB HD per machine here, you mentioned that you have to delete the previous save to do another one, Acronis clone will flush any Destination medium before doing its trick of cloning all to it. The double advantage of a clone is that beside being an "image", it really is, to the extend that you can replace files/folders singly if need be. Doing a backup, I undestand that the whole thing has to be "backed-up" to the machine, in one lump. Your choice !

Be good .............Jean.

Edit: Letter O added to Hell to make it a polite Hello.

[Medico]

Thanks for your feedback. I now see that I need to make an image copy of the whole partition on my computer. Unfortunately because of lack of space on my other hard drive I will have to delete my image files ( which were backed up on another computer and copied to the new one ) and then do an image copy.

The distinct advantage of separating your data onto a separate partition is that you do not have to image your data, you simply do an incremental backup which saves changes. This saves time if for example your data is rather large. Think about storing your Images on an Ext HD, prices have become very reasonable and you don"t have to delete an Image to create a new up to date image.

[JoeP517]

Don't forget that recovery using a full backup + incrementals can be time consuming. You must be careful to keep and apply all incremental backups since the last full backup. While full backups are more time consuming to create they are easier to restore. There is always a trade off.

Joe

[Medico]

As an edit to my above post, part of my point was supposed to be that large amounts of data, as some users here do have, causes Images to run slower and an incremental backup scheme that ensures everything is backed up properly may be more efficient than an Image of everything, whereas if your data is relatively small, then Image everything. In my case I have C drive (OS) and D Drive (Data). When I create an Image with Acronis, I Image both partitions each time because my data is relatively small. Acronis allows you to either restore either partition separately or both at the same time, whichever you choose.